David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I congratulate my colleagues in Fine Gael for tabling this very important motion. The Government needs to be thoughtful, as Senator MacSharry has been, in helping us to confront the very serious situation in which we find ourselves and not just dismiss it. One of the principle thrusts of the motion is the terrible situation regarding unemployment. I have spoken about finance; it has never been reported in this House.

I came up with an idea comparable to NAMA some time ago which I will not go into. One of its elements concerned the land banks around cities. It was a simple, perhaps naive idea, but I think it would help. I suggested that some of this land be taken by the Government, divided into allotments and people be given small kits with seeds, plants and tools and title to the allotments. It would get people out of the house and stop depression developing. We hear from all the voluntary agencies that depression is a serious illness which attacks unemployed people. The allotments would give them exercise and supplement their budgets and diets. It is a simple idea which would not cost very much. The Government should perhaps think about it. Responses to this area will be a mixture of small ideas like that and encouraging small business and the grander vision, about which I will say a few words.

We need to clear away a lot of red tape from small businesses and people who have a real entrepreneurial spirit, and do our damnedest to get money flowing, what is sometimes called risk capital, because the banks have become extremely risk averse. It is extraordinarily important that we manage to get finance to people who have ideas and are prepared to act on them.

I will give an example. There is a very well-known Dublin company called Granby's which makes sausages and it is located just behind Parnell Square. It is a small business that turns over a number of millions of euro and employs a considerable number of people. It has come up with what I think is a very good idea of making so-called hot mollies, which are reasonably sized sausages like a frankfurter. It has imaginative little trolleys in the centre of the city and at commuting times the company proposes to sell this product. There would be a certain number of jobs from this and quite a manufacturing capacity which would make up some of the shortfall caused by the practices of certain supermarkets and so on. The company has hit a snag despite the goodwill of local authorities because by-laws prohibit the casual sale of goods on the street without a casual trading licence. As existing casual trading licences are restricted in number and hours of operation and limit the type of goods that can be sold, one is unlikely to get a casual trading licence for an existing location as long as there are no new casual trading areas. A young man in charge of a traditional business has an opportunity to expand employment and give a good service — I have seen the project — and this is only one example. It is simple and could perhaps be dismissed as naive but it will create employment and it is Irish.

I have been speaking about seafood for a very long time in this House because it is one of the great unexploited resources of this country. As Dominic Behan stated in his wonderful song, thank God we are surrounded by water, and it is still relatively full of fish and shellfish in particular. These include crab, lobster, mussels and oysters, and such foods have not been sufficiently exploited. I will be positive and say I was glad to see a Minister of State, Deputy Tony Killeen, in Cork the other day visiting the first dedicated seafood development centre. That is the kind of thing I have been screaming about for years.

We have been exporting our seafood in bulk rather than packaged and prepared for the market, thereby losing approximately 80% of the value. In effect, we hand it over to others. I am very glad that we now have an opportunity to deal with value-added seafood thanks to the work of this Minister of State and Bord Iascaigh Mhara. The development centre has an innovative section which I am sure the Minister of State knows about. In it one can get advice on marketing and help with guiding an initial idea through to a fairly rudimentary export process. It may look like small potatoes — or periwinkles — but that is where we will see growth. These are the small elements that will withstand a financial storm.

We should look to the bigger picture. I am unashamed at having used this House to promote a number of projects, one of which is the metro in Dublin. I have been advocating it for nearly 20 years. I exploited a position where the Government changed without an election and Independent University Senators were put in the pivotal position governing the balance of power. I used the opportunity to amend the Dublin transport Bill to include a rudimentary framework for a metro. The Government should continue with the metro. We can look to the jobs in construction that will be brought into play by this.

Have a bit of courage and do it properly. In consultation with the great imaginative figure of Cormac Rabbitt, the man who is the William Dargan of our day, I have advocated my mark II proposal of an orbital network, which could link with all existing transport networks rather than having a route direct to the airport. Perhaps that could be included. Whatever the Government does, it should not spoil the ship for hap'orth of tar. It should put in decent stations that people will respect. A plexiglass box could be used like that at the Louvre station in Paris, displaying treasures from the National Gallery, the National Museum or the Ardagh chalice, the Book of Kells and the Tara brooch. People should be given a sense of pride again. The Abbey Theatre will produce a few jobs and lift our society. It is not just pertinent to the economy and the feeling and spirit of the people will be helped.

I have spoken for quite a long time about negative equity and warned about the position in which people would find themselves in having been offered 100% loans and gotten into difficulty. The figures are frightening and something must be done. MABS is a wonderful body but the Minister of State should tell his colleagues that it should be properly resourced and financed, which it is not at the moment. It will be needed more and more as we slide to a catastrophic 350,000 people in negative equity, of whom 10% or 35,000 may suffer repossessions. Despite what Margaret Thatcher said, we are more than an economy. In this country we are a society. We cannot permit such repossessions except to our undying shame.